Four Tips for Fantastic Forearms-How to Best Maximize Their Growth

1-Work on Your Grip to Help Your Forearm Progression

Forearms are one of those muscle groups that doesn’t require a lot of equipment, and can easily be done at home on the cheap. One piece of equipment that is really cheap or that you can easily make yourself is tying a plate to a dowel.

A dowel is just a small piece of metal or wood that you can use to wrap a rope around, which is useful for standing rope forearm exercises.

All you need to do this is a weight, a piece of rope, the dowel and something you can stand on to elevate yourself. Tie one end of the rope around the dowel, and the other end around a weight.

To do the exercise, stand on the elevated platform while holding the dowel, with the weight resting on the floor. You are going to extend your arms out to where they are straight but not locked. Rotate the dowel towards, you pulling the weight up, and continue to do so until the rope is fully coiled.

You can also buy grip strengthening tools like a ball or hand gripper at a sporting goods store, and are relatively cheap as well. These are great tools you can carry around anywhere with you, and can use them for quick grip training exercises on the go.

2-Work Your Forearms More Often

Unlike many other muscle groups in the body, the forearms muscles are pretty densely packed and thus can be trained more often. Training your forearms once a week isn’t going to do you much good in terms of overall growth.

Your forearms are similar to your calves, and you should think of them as such. You don’t train your calves every other day because they work every day no matter what, and one day of training isn’t going to do much.

The forearms are much the same, in that you are using them often to perform everyday tasks, and thus they need more work to see development and growth. You should be working them every other day to see the best results.

Remember that because the forearms are used in many functions including many of the exercises we perform, that you save your forearm routine for the end of your workout.

If you are training your forearms on biceps or back day, make sure to do so after your other routines so that your forearms aren’t tired beforehand and you get the most out of your workout as a result. Also try not to schedule your forearm heavy workouts on the day prior to an arm or back workout to give your forearms adequate rest.

3-Ditch the Straps If You Want to See Real Growth

Straps can be great tools when your joints are a hindrance to hitting your maximum weight in say a dead lift, but they aren’t doing you any good when it comes to building up your forearms.

Your grip strength is extremely important in exercise, and straps aren’t doing you any good in that regard. When working on your forearms ditch the straps and develop your grip strength too while you’re at it.

Many of these exercises revolve around the use of your fingers and thumbs as well, which you simply can’t do while wearing straps. As your grip strength improves so will your forearm strength and size as a result.

4- Train with Higher Reps for More Growth

Usually when it comes to weight training this is the opposite of what is true, but when it comes to your forearms you want to stick to higher repetitions. This is because as we said earlier, the forearms are used in many functions and in some cases are worked hundreds of times a day.

No one is suggesting that you design a 2 hour workout that exclusively revolves around your forearms, but the more reps the better. When training for endurance we usually shoot around 15 repetitions per set depending in the exercise, however here we want to do 20-25 repetitions per set.

If you still are skeptical just think of what kind of people have the biggest forearms, more often than not they are people in the trades like mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. People who use the forearms to do their job, which requires hundreds of “repetitions” per day.